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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

I'm in this rationalization camp since I actually did make insane returns from cryptocurrency. Even then, I can't bring myself to defend this space because of the sheer a) amount of scams, and b) lack of utility.

The scams wouldn't even be a problem - every fledgling platform has them - but the fact that the crypto community embraces scams and even encourages them. Scammers can rug a project for millions and turn around and launch another project within a week and everyone will still buy it because of greed.

And this is the crypto dilemma: the crypto community has utterly failed at self-regulation. Ergo, it has to be regulated by the government. However, a cryptocurrency that's beholden to government rules is antithetical to the core crypto ideas of self-ownership, privacy, and freedom.

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There are plenty of existing laws for dealing with scammers and fraudsters, why not use them? Also, are victims really victims when they knowingly buy into scams "because of greed"? At the very least, they don't seem to be the ones calling for a cryptocurrency ban.

I disagree that there is a monolithic "crypto community" that encourages scams. For example, a great deal of the Bitcoin community is fervently anti altcoin and many even consider Ethereum as a "shitcoin".

Regarding utility, everyone is entitled to their opinion. I disagree. There was a time in my life when I was "unbanked" and Bitcoin was the only way I could transact online. In the end, utility is subjective and it is not the government's job to decide whether something has utility or not.

> There was a time in my life when I was "unbanked" and Bitcoin was the only way I could transact online.

This really needs said louder. Writing off the entirety of cryptocurrency as "useless" betrays either stunning ignorance or immense privilege (or possibly even both). Even in the "developed" world (let alone "developing") there are countless people whom the legacy financial system does not serve yet is happy to exploit; cryptocurrency ain't some silver bullet, but it does address quite a few of the legacy system's injustices.

Don't disagree with that, but does banking the unbanked require hundreds of billions of dollars in funding? Do the unbanked need algostables, five-figure APY yield farming, sophisticated options protocols like Ribbon, and memecoins valued at $20B?

The core ideas behind crypto remain solid. Unfortunately that has been hijacked completely by speculators.

Lots of things get hijacked by speculators all the time. That doesn't mean the rest of us need to care; none of that has much bearing on the fact that anyone anywhere in the world of any socioeconomic standing can send money to or receive money from anyone else anywhere in the world of any socioeconomic standing.

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